The hammer-blow of recognition came a moment later.
There was a halfbreed woman there – some mangling of Moth and something else – whom he did not know; dressed like an itinerant beggar in a battered old Imperial long-coat, she seemed about as happy with the Sarnesh as Balkus himself was. He took her for old at first, for her hair was streaked with white and her oddly mottled skin and iris-less eyes misled him, but as he neared he saw that she was much younger than he was. A stranger, though – none of his business. The rest of them, however . . .
There was a Beetle girl there, a short, solid daughter of Collegium for all that she looked older than the mere passage of years could account for. Not really the awkward girl he recalled from Helleron and Collegium any more, but a serious-faced woman with enough of her uncle’s authority about her that the Ants at her side seemed to be her escort and not her captors. She wore robes, but not Collegiate ones: layered garments of silks in green and black and dark blue.
There was a Spider, too, and it took Balkus a moment longer to recognize her. She slowed the whole party by walking with an awkward limp, and her face – which he recalled as beautiful and mischievous – had been savaged by a scar running down one side of it, gashing the corner of her mouth and narrowly missing her eye. She was dressed after the Mantis fashion, arming jacket, breeches and boots and a Spider anywhere near this forest as much as promised bloodshed . . .
. . . If the last member of this little pack of spies didn’t get them all executed first, of course. Balkus looked upon the man without love, although with a sort of wonder that here he was again, the man for whom one master was never enough, and yet somehow always one too many. Turning up now at a conference squarely aimed at exterminating his kind, the Wasp was a strong-framed man of middle years, with a bleak, hard look to him. He wore a breastplate, greaves and bracers of glittering grey chitin over clothes of dark silk – the garb of a Commonweal warrior noble – but Balkus found that nothing could surprise him where Major Thalric of the Rekef was concerned.
Thalric he would happily have left to rot, and the halfbreed was a stranger, but the other two were going to get him into trouble because they were former comrades in arms, and Ants, even renegades, all suffered from the curse of loyalty.
‘What’s going on, then? What’s this?’ He used words because he did not trust what thoughts he might reveal to the mindlink.
The voice of their officer was inside his head in an instant – Nothing of yours – with a dozen echoes as the thoughts of his men leaked out, in various degrees of hostility.
Balkus put himself squarely in their path, already kicking himself for the move, but life had a way of dropping these sorts of situations on him. ‘Listen, I know them.’
That didn’t go down quite as he hoped: no change of circumstances for the prisoners, but Balkus himself had become a focus for suspicion. The protection afforded by his status as ambassador abruptly looked vulnerable.
Clear out, if you know what’s good for you. They’re for the cells and the Wasp is for questioning, the officer sent to him. If you want to come along, you might find yourself part of the show, renegade.
‘Balkus?’ It was the Beetle girl, Che Maker, now recognizing him after a second look. ‘It’s all right. They’re taking us to the tactician.’
‘They’re taking him to the torture machines, whatever they’ve told you.’ He pointed at Thalric, almost enjoying the extra ripple of betrayal from the Sarnesh. ‘Listen, you.’ He jabbed a finger at the officer, aware that he now had the attention of the whole camp. ‘I know them, and you don’t want to mess with them. This one, she’s Stenwold Maker’s niece. You’ve heard of him.’
Abruptly there were at least another score of Ant soldiers all around him, their blades out.
Surrender your weapons, renegade. In covering for these spies you’ve crossed the line, came the thought of the officer, slightly blurred by all the simmering malice of the others. And, believe me, nobody’s going to shed any tears if that rabble at Princep complain.
Balkus’s weapon was his nailbow, a solid firepowder-charged repeater, loaded and primed. He had no intention of surrendering it. ‘Listen, that’s Sten Maker’s niece. That Spider girl is his adopted daughter or something. I’m Princep’s chief soldier and I came here because of some stuff about allies. Where’d that go all of a sudden?’ He was listening out for the thoughts of the Sarnesh command, who surely had more sense than this, but although they were certainly hearing everything second-hand, they took no steps to stop it.
Then the Mantis-kinden was there.
He was a lean, weathered man, with his ragged beard iron-grey, dressed in brown leathers and a cuirass of chitin scales, and he had a spear in his hand. His fierce gaze barely admitted to the presence of any of them there save the scarred Spider girl. Balkus had not even thought that complication through. Certainly the Ants were not a trusting breed, especially not in the wake of a military defeat, but the Mantis-kinden out-and-out hated Spiders, beyond any reason, and though Balkus knew the girl was half-Mantis by blood, that was just about the single piece of knowledge that would make matters even worse.
Still, the spearman’s stare was narrowing to focus, not on her face, but on the badge she wore.
The Ants had gone quiet, watching intently as he levelled his spear towards the woman. ‘To wear that badge undeservingly is to die,’ he snapped.
‘Are you challenging me?’ The Spider girl, Tynisa, spoke sideways, her scar tugging at her mouth.
‘You claim to have even the right to be challenged, rather than cut down where you stand?’ the Mantis demanded.
‘Enough,’ Che Maker said, not even loudly, and Balkus fully expected nobody to pay her the blindest bit of notice. The Mantis started away from her, though, staring, and the half-dozen other Mantids close by were all staring too, even those surely out of earshot. That fierce regard caught the Ants’ attention as well, so that everyone heard her next words.
‘As I have told you, and as this man has confirmed, I am Cheerwell Maker of Collegium, and I’m no man’s captive. You will not torture the Wasp-kinden, for he is mine and under my protection. You will not duel my sister, for she is mine and I forbid it. You understand me.’ There was no question at the end of her words.
The spearman bared his teeth. ‘This is not permitted!’
Balkus’s immediate assumption was that Che must have said something as she stepped forwards, some word that silenced the man and staggered every Mantis-kinden in sight. Only in the confused mental babble that followed, from the Sarnesh comparing notes, did Balkus realize that no, she had not spoken: she had simply . . . It was as though there had been some sound, some great retort from that one footfall – one that only the Mantids had heard.
There was a flurry of motion from within the camp and the Moth ambassador, whom Balkus had never seen without an expression of smug self-satisfaction, came pelting out from amidst the Ants, robe flying behind him, white eyes as wide as lamps. ‘Who are you . . .?’ he got out, before skidding to a halt. The Mantids had backed off, even the spearman: Tynisa was apparently off the menu. All those Inapt eyes were squarely fixed on Che, and Balkus had never seen such expressions on Mantid faces before.
There was an awkward moment as Sarnesh thoughts shuttled back and forth, trying to weave some sense out of it. ‘I don’t know what you just did,’ the Sarnesh officer snapped at last, desperately trying to keep hold of the situation, ‘but it won’t wash with me.’ His voice grew more strained as the hostility of the Mantids seemed to be turning on him, now it had been deflected from elsewhere, and the Moth was making some gesture as if to shut him up. ‘It’ll take more than the word of this renegade to vouch for you.’
‘She is Cheerwell Maker,’ a fresh voice boomed.
The officer rounded on the intruder to find himself face to face with the entire Collegiate delegation, and face to chest with the huge Beetle warrior who had just spoken.
‘This is not your concern.’ He was a dogged one, th
is officer. Balkus had to admire him for that.
‘I know her. She is Maker’s niece. I know the Wasp, too.’ And if the big man’s glance at Thalric was less fond, he was still plainly vouching for him.
‘Amnon?’ came Che’s voice, more hesitant now, and stripped of its unaccountable power of moments before. ‘What are you doing here?’
A change whipped through the Ants, all at once. Even Balkus felt the lash of it. Abruptly they had stepped away from Che’s party, no longer guarding four people who were, therefore, no longer prisoners. The collective mind was now focused elsewhere, for a burly Ant-kinden was approaching with a half-dozen others dragged along in his wake. Balkus had never seen him before, but he knew who this man must be. The Sarnesh tactician, Milus, had just arrived.
Report, he gave out, and a concise and ordered account from the officer must have been served directly to his mind and for his consideration only. The tactician’s iron-coloured eyes flicked across the newcomers – Che, Tynisa, Thalric and the halfbreed woman – then passed swiftly by Balkus to size up the Collegiates, Amnon in particular. With so much of their social interaction lived within the minds of their fellows, Ant-kinden seldom had the knack of impressing outsiders with the force of their personalities, but Milus had a weight to him, a tangible force of will. In Balkus’s experience those who became tacticians were frequently those who tested the limits of public approval, their differences turned into virtues only when they were set above their fellows. That this man had been chosen to oversee the war against the Wasps argued that he was someone to be wary of.
Whatever this is about, it will wait, his thoughts told the Ants flatly, Balkus included. Keep an eye on them, the Wasp especially, but I myself have seen Maker, and this girl does look a little like him. We have other concerns, though. We Apt must at least seem united. His gaze swept over them: Balkus from Princep, the Collegiate woman Bartrer, Che Maker and the other newcomers. When he spoke, really spoke, his voice sounded gravelly and rough. ‘The Nethyen ambassador is coming and we can get down to business.’
The Sarnesh, who had been quietly industrious ever since they had arrived, now abandoned their tasks, all at once and to a man, assembling instead in ruler-straight ranks facing the forest, wordless and vigilant with swords at their side and snapbows sloping against their shoulders. Their tactician wished to impress, that much was plain. To one side some Mantis-kinden – the locals, and yet less than a tenth of the Sarnesh’s number – had formed a loose-knit mob, and Che found her gaze drawn to them. She had known very few of their kind, and none of them well, not even Tynisa’s father. Beside the Ants’ gleaming perfection, they looked scruffy, old-fashioned, provincial. She knew that they would each make deadly combatants, but how much did that truly count for in the age of the snapbow and the automotive? She herself, who had been robbed of her understanding of those technological wonders, found that she had more than a little sympathy for them.
‘You’ll stand with our delegation?’ Helma Bartrer suggested to her. ‘This is a historic moment. The Nethyen don’t usually meet with strangers, Master . . . tells me.’
The Moth had kept pace with them, not quite close, yet always in earshot. It was hard to say what his blind-looking eyes were watching, but whenever Che moved, he moved. He had the manner of a man who wanted to ask questions, but whose dignity was getting the better of him.
‘We’ve been on the road a long time,’ Tynisa declared. ‘And I’ll likely be fighting a duel soon enough, whatever Che says. Let’s leave politics to the statesmen.’
‘We’ll watch,’ Che decided, and then, relenting, added, ‘or I will. If you want to go and rest, then go and rest. I’m sure they can find a place for you here.’
Maure, the halfbreed magician they had brought from the Commonweal, was plainly about to do just that, but then Thalric spoke up: ‘Che, it’s clear that you’re the reason we’re still free right now. Let’s stay in your shadow, until we know the ground.’ His hand squeezed her shoulder, seeking reassurance under the pretence of providing it.
One of the Mantids was heading towards the forest now, a stern-looking woman with a green-brown cloak flowing behind her. Che’s party and the Collegiates added a small huddle to one corner of the great Ant formation, close to where Balkus stood alone. Looking from Balkus to Amnon to her own party, Che could only think, How we have all come up in the world.
From the forest verge emerged another Mantis-kinden woman, a lean creature in chitin armour that was chased with silver. She met with her opposite number, and the two stared at one another for a long, slow moment, as though they shared some private linking of minds that even Ants were not privy to. There were a few words exchanged, but too low to carry. The Etheryen woman nodded once, curtly, as if agreeing some single point of business.
The blades flashed and clashed almost instantly. Of all the watchers, perhaps only Che and her fellows would admit that neither had actually bothered with anything so prosaic as drawing a sword – the rapiers had been in their hands in the moment of lunging, and a swift patter of a dozen scraping blows passed before the Ants even understood what was going on. She could guess at their shared question: Is this a Mantis thing? And it was, of course it was, but it was not done for mere play.
The Moth understood too. He was abruptly running forwards, arms out. ‘No! Servants of the Green! I forbid it!’ His voice was surprisingly loud and clear for such a slight-framed man.
In that moment the newcomer, the Nethyen woman, had won. Che had not followed the interchange of strikes but suddenly the Etheryen delegate was falling back, her throat opened by the other woman’s rapier, and the Moth stumbled to a halt within inches of the sword’s bloodied point.
‘What have you done?’ he demanded, shaken out of his composure before so many witnesses.
The Nethyen woman simply stared at him, undaunted, her sword level with his breast as though giving him the chance to take up the gauntlet. Then she turned, the blade vanished from her hands, as though dismissing the entire martial assembly from her mind. She stepped back into the forest, and was gone.
Two
Two tendays before.
Overlooking Collegium, and overlooking the sea, stood the old house on the cliffs.
It had been built two generations before as a retreat by a clique of philosophers, but its isolated location and the windswept nature of the surrounds had led to its abandonment a decade or so later, since when it had become the haunt of odd recluses, fugitives and perhaps spies. For the space of a few years, it had served as a wayhouse catering to just those sorts, and a few from Collegium who simply wished to get away from the crowd.
Some months ago, the Assembly had gifted the place to a new trading franchise, the Tidenfree Cartel, and placed a lamp atop its single tower. If ships’ captains had complained that the new lighthouse served no useful purpose, well, they were seldom listened to in the Assembly. And those who muttered that sometimes the lamp blinked and flashed, as if sending out messages across the sea . . . well, seafarers were always telling tales.
Now Stenwold himself stood in the tower room below the lamp and stared out at the waves, the unquiet sea showing blue and grey in turns, cresting beneath a changing wind. He had taken refuge here many times since its most recent change of ownership. The Tidenfree Cartel were his creatures, in as much as they were anyone’s, and he was their patron, their supporter, their conspirator in the great secret. Only he and Jodry Drillen, Speaker for the Assembly, knew that those miraculous metals and machine parts that the Tidenfree crew imported to the city did not come from some obscure city of Spiderlands artificers, as the cover story went, but instead from beneath the sea itself.
‘They’ve cleared this place out good, now, haven’t they?’ A deep voice came from behind him. It was Tomasso, chief merchant of the Tidenfree Cartel and master of its single ship, of the same name. And a former pirate, of course, although to see him now, dressed respectably like a Collegiate citizen and wooed by a dozen mercantile conce
rns, one would never have known it. He was a burly Fly-kinden with a dark beard and a mischievous look to him, for all that he was close to Stenwold’s age. His eyes roamed the walls, finding only absences there, for his crew had already passed through the lighthouse and stripped it of everything when the Wasps had got close to the city.
‘The factora in the city is acceptable?’ Stenwold asked him.
‘Will do nicely until we chase the Jaspers away,’ Tomasso agreed. ‘This place started looking a bit exposed when their lads from the Second began setting up.’ He grimaced. ‘I’m no engineer, but you may have to pull the old place down. Gives too much of a vantage over the city.’
‘Not that the Imperial artillery needs that, nowadays, but yes, it’s been thought of. We’ve engines in the city that have calculated the range.’ Stenwold was still staring out to sea as though trying to divine the future from the surging waves. ‘She knows . . .?’
‘. . . Not to come here,’ Tomasso finished for him. ‘Or anywhere, right now. I hear Despard’s just back from down there, probably has letters for you even. But they know the score, the Sea-kinden. If the Wasps were coming by boat, your lad Aradocles would be sending up his monsters by the dozen, but I reckon the Spiders haven’t forgotten the last time.’
Stenwold nodded. The Spider-kinden – many of whom were now marching alongside the Wasp Second Army – had tried to send a fleet against Collegium, but Stenwold and Tomasso’s newfound friends beneath the waves had dissuaded them. The tentative, secretive arrangements put in place between land and sea that rested so much on Tomasso and his opposite number below had been bearing fruit and working better than anyone had anticipated. If the Wasps had not revived the war, a whole new age of enlightenment might be dawning. Instead of which, Stenwold’s city was scarred with bomb craters, his people turned into soldiers, and three dozen military decisions were currently prowling about the streets, waiting for him to return and put them out of their misery. Simply to avoid them, he had come out here, perhaps for the last time, to stare at the sea.
War Master's Gate Page 3
